Do the Ents count?
How about the James Arness “carrot-man” from “The Thing (From Another World)(1951)”?
Lost in Space had an episode with this as a theme: “The Great Vegetable Rebellion”. Here’s a photo of the leader, a talking carrot. The Great Vegetable Rebellion | Lost in Space Wiki | Fandom
A short story by Roald Dahl, “The Sound Machine,” features a man who puts on a pair of specially-boffined earphones and hears roses screaming in pain when their stems are cut. It’s a classic.
I did a little Googling around and found that the idea of sentient plants is a well-established sub-genre of SF. For instance, here’s a discussion called “Talking Trees and Killer Spores: Flora of Science Fiction and Fantasy” at:
Alan Dean Foster had a short story about this…I think it was “The Dark Light Girl” (collected in “…Who Needs Enemies?”).
IIRC, the brainy Dua feeds on sunlight in Asimov’s The Gods Themselves.
She also experienced photogasms when exposed to intense sunlight.
Lyekka was a carnivorous plant; I don’t think photosynthesis was ever mentioned.
Ficus from Quark was a Vegetron. Although he was human appearing, I do not recall that he was a human hybrid. He did, however attempt to pollinate with Princess Libido.
I am Groot.
Skroderiders, namely Blueshell and Greenstalk
“Be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait for the bee.”
There’s also “Green Winter” by F. Paul Wilson, and it appears I’m the only one who’s ever heard of that or him.
The Czillians from the Well World series are plant people who root themselves and photosynthesize during the day and work at night.
IIRC the aliens from Poul Anderson’s Fire Time had symbiotic plants growing on them.
The Supox of Star Control II are sapient plants.
Those characters gave off light, but didn’t absorb it, as I recall.
For what it’s worth, carnivorous plants do use photosynthesis. UCSB Science Line
In Michael Resnick’s Birthright, the first intelligent species accidentally killed off during the expansion of Man were unfortunate enough to look like cabbages for orbital surveys, and the defoliation stage of terraforming caused their extinction.
Do we know whether Swamp Thing or Poison Ivy would qualify?
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Timothy Green from The Odd Life of Timothy Green. That wasn’t sci-fi though.
In Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” the main character meets a green man who is from one of his world’s possible futures. The in-story explanation is that green men have a symbiotic relationship with genetically modified algae that lives in their tissues. The actual photosynthesis is performed by the algae, not the man.
In his 1976 book Star Trek Log Eight, Foster also wrote a very clever extension to the ST:TAS episode “The Eye of the Beholder.” In it, the Enterprise crew encounters and helps a far-distant civilization of plant-based beings. I believe that the aliens photosynthesized.
Quiet, you!